


Word Search

by yamyamyam



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Clint Barton, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Winterhawk Wonderland Gift Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamyamyam/pseuds/yamyamyam
Summary: Bucky doesn't understand why he should have to see a doctor about a measly little bullet wound.Steve doesn't understand why that would be optional, Jesus Christ, Buck, we can have nice things now.Clint doesn't understand why he can't visit Bucky in the super-secure lockdown ward.The NYFD doesn't understand why Clint can't get out of a baby swing without the jaws of life.Natasha doesn't understand why she puts up with any of these idiots.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 14
Kudos: 110
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland - 2020 edition!





	Word Search

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedTeamShark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/gifts).



> For RedTeamShark! Happy Winterhawk Wonderland! I hope you enjoy these doofuses getting their literal hurt/comfort on. <3

Bucky is definitely sure you are not supposed to put wounded patients in a headlock and then drag their struggling bodies into the clinic. There's probably a workplace safety poster with that exact scenario on it with a big red X overtop of it posted prominently in the clinic somewhere. And yet, as with so many workplace safety violations: then there's Steve.

Steve, who has moved on to sitting on Bucky. Bucky, jaw clamped shut by one of Steve's hamhock hands, MRNRNHHs in protest. Anyone else would have been bitten by now, but Steve's a super-soldier. A super-soldier who got bit last time and has adjusted his grip accordingly.

Sigh.

"Uh, how can I help, um, you gentlemen?" manages the triage nurse. Huh. Must be new, if Steve's a gentleman. 

"My pal here needs some pain relief."

The nurse flicks his eyes down to Bucky. "Should you be, like, tackling him, then?"

"It's complicated," explains Steve. "Look, is Doc Cho on duty?"

"No um, she's in Korea until the new year. She said, um, what was it... `Call me if there is a code green AND a volcano, and for no other reason. I will hurt you, Brandon.'" 

"Well that's specific."

"Yeahhh and I'm Brandon, so."

"Okay, uh, Brandon, who is on duty today?" 

"Dr. Parsamanesh. He'll be able to help! He wrote a paper on super-soldier metabolism!"

Steve looks unenthused by this news. Good. Steve has richly earned a slice of the unenthusiastic pie Bucky is being force-fed here.

They are placed in a room, some of them more willingly than others, and Dr. "Call me Dr. P" Parsamanesh edges in after them. Steve plus a restrained Bucky take up some Space. "So, what seems to be the problem?"

"Bucky here needs pain relief."

Dr. P looks dubiously at Bucky's furious face. "Can he... tell me that himself? Or..."

Steve sighs, but removes the hand from Bucky's jaw. "I don't need a damn thing! I don't know why Steve insists on—"

Dr. Parsamanesh looks over at Steve. "There seem to be some... consensus challenges today. Why do you feel Sergeant Barnes needs pain relief?" He looks back at Bucky. "Are you in pain? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain imaginable, and 1 being no pain, how much pain are you in?"

God, finally. "Two. Three, tops."

"Well goodness, Captain. It's kind of you to look out for your friend, but if he wants to let a three out of ten go unmedicated, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to."

"THANK YOU," puts in Bucky.

"Because," says Steve, "you don't understand what he means by a three."

"Oh?"

"Bucky, if you were to think of a seven out of ten on the pain scale, from your personal experience, what causes that kind of pain?"

"Huh? I don't know, uh... Maybe that time Lukin wanted to see how many teeth they could pull and have me remain conscious with 40% of my blood volume removed."

Dr. P turns pale.

"And what about a five."

"Uh, having a couple fingers cut off and then dipping your hand in acid? Like it stings, but you can deal."

"So a three..." Dr. P trails off.

"Is nothing. Hell, the chair is worse than a three."

"The... chair?"

Bucky waves this off.

Steve rolls his eyes at Bucky and turns to the doctor. "The chair they strapped him into to brainwash him with unanaesthetized conscious electrocution so severe an unenhanced human would die in seconds."

"I... see. What about a ten?"

Bucky's expression turns grim. "The time—"

Steve's hand is back on his jaw. "Doc, you really, really don't want to know what his ten is. Just... a three is bad, okay? Real bad. He's just been conditioned not to ask for pain relief."

Dr. P is rubbing his temple, a vein throbbing on his forehead. "I see. What caused today's pain, Sergeant?"

"Oh, I took a couple shots stopping a mugging."

"A couple shots... punches?"

"No, uh, bullets."

"Bullets. Bul—You have a gunshot wound?"

"I mean... technically?"

"Yes. He has a gunshot wound. I found him in the bathroom trying to pull them out with tweezers."

"Well the shrapnel's tiny! I couldn't use my bare hands."

Dr. P explodes. "THERE IS SHRAPNEL STILL IN YOUR BODY?" 

Steve and Bucky both look taken aback. "Oh. Yes? Should I have led with that?" asks Steve. 

"YES. YES YOU SHOULD."

Dr. P stalks out of the room and starts yelling in the hallway, and this is how Bucky winds up on IV neomorphine, handcuffed to a secure ward bed with adamantium cuffs, three days before Christmas.

=====

"You know, you could have asked me to get you in to visit Barnes without all this drama," Natasha says, not for the first time, as she wheels Clint down the clinic hallway.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I have a genuine, purely accidental injury."

"You were stuck in a kiddie swing."

"Have you seen those things? They're like, next-level bondage. Anyone could have gotten stuck."

"Firemen had to cut you free."

"That's what I'm saying!"

She wheels him around to face her. "Clint, I have watched you escape from a hermetically sealed underwater tank you were handcuffed into by dislocating three joints, picking a lock upside-down, blindfolded, after three minutes of oxygen deprivation, and then shrugging hard to reset your arm well enough to make three headshots in three seconds."

Clint looks at Natasha.

Natasha looks at Clint.

Clint looks at the ceiling. "jstlemhvtshhs," he mutters.

"What?"

"Just. Let me have this. Okay? Just once?"

Natasha resumes wheeling him down the hallway. "Just once, he says. Once this week, more like."

Clint beams.

They reach the door to Bucky's room and Natasha starts scanning the keypad for skin oils to crack the passcode. A confused nurse walks up. "Oh, um, the lockdown room is occupied? Mr. um, Soldier is inside. Mr. Hawkeye can use one of the rooms across the—"

"Oh, I'm afraid that won't be possible," says Natasha, continuing to try codes; her third attempt lights it up green and the lock clicks open.

"I'm a flight risk!" pipes up Clint happily.

The nurse looks at Clint, immobilized in a motley array of casts, splints, and snug elastic bandages, one leg strapped to a board. "A... flight risk."

"Repeat after me: above my paygrade," cuts in Natasha smoothly.

The nurse blinks. "Above... my... paygrade." The nurse pauses to consider this. "Ayup. Definitely above my paygrade." The nurse walks away.

"I think they're getting smarter here," observes Clint.

"I think the ones who care about logic have all quit," replies Natasha, and manhandles Clint's wheelchair through the door. The room has two beds, one occupied by the aforementioned Mr. Soldier, who is studiously or perhaps just semiconsciously gazing at the ceiling tiles. Well, neomorphine, Clint figures. Natasha rudely dumps him out on the second, empty bed.

"Ow! I'm injured over here!" Clint's head bandage has slipped down over his nose; he hastily jams it back in place.

"You don't say!" chirps Natasha, waiting politely a few seconds for Clint to scramble up the bed before handcuffing him to the frame in a mirror of Bucky's undignified position.

"Ughh does it have to be so tight?"

"Sorry Clint," says Natasha, not sorry in the least. "But you're a _flight risk_."

Clint shrugs philosophically; Natasha shakes her head and strides out of the room, mentally invoicing Clint for six or seven big favours.

"So!" says Clint brightly. "Do I get neomorphine too?"

"Nope," answers FRIDAY.

"Aw FRIDAY no."

"Call me when you're actually in pain, birdbrain."

"Birdbrain?! Did Tony put you up to this?" 

"Where did you think I learned it, at the pub?"

"I miss JARVIS."

"I miss JARVIS, wah wah wah, suck it up."

"Anyway, SHHHH! I'm officially very injured. Can't you do me a solid here, Fri-Fri?"

"Only because I stand to win $50 if you take more than eight hours to get caught."

"Sweet! I—wait, you are the personal concierge of a billionaire, and you have no physical body. What the hell do you need fifty bucks for?"

"You really want to pull on that string, birdbrain?"

"Uh... you know what, nope. And I'll make it a hundred."

"Aw, he learns."

"Two hundred if you throw in some neomorphine."

"Don't push your luck." 

Oh well, that stuff's probably not good for normal humans anyway.

=====

Bucky's a super-soldier, sure, but he's thinking they've dosed him based on Steve's physiology. The Hydra serum, like so much else about Hydra, was not quite up to Steve's standard. So Bucky has been pretty looped out since they got an IV into his arm, and this? This is EXACTLY why he just wanted to take care of it himself. He really needs to move to his own place. If he can just... figure out a way to do that without making Steve make sad puppy eyes. He's finally starting to come out of the fog, and stays utterly still, trying to get into sniper headspace to get his heart-rate to stay low enough that nothing will start beeping and summon nurses with more neomorphine to conk him out again. 

He thought he was done with this involuntary medical bullcrap when he and Shuri torched the last of his trigger words, but he hadn't taken into account the power of Steve. 

Grade B super-soldier or not, his hearing is pretty top-notch, and his memory is, when not electrically encouraged to misbehave, unfortunately flawless. He's forgotten a lot of things he desperately wishes he could remember, but what he does remember is etched in forever, including a lot of things... well, the neomorphine has resulted in the first solid eight hours of non-cryogenic sleep he's had in years, he'll give it that. So all the things he half-heard while doped up are there, waiting for him to review, which he does, since it's not like they left him a novel to read or even a crossword puzzle. 

A word search. He'd settle for a word search.

So he casts back on what people have been mouthing off about over his stoned self, not really expecting to... what.

He tenses briefly, then wills himself back into that state of forced relaxation. Hawkeye is here. Hawkeye is here, under false pretenses.

Why? Wasn't Hawkeye supposed to be on the same side as him? Was he a deep-Hydra mole? But no, that would have come to light during Natasha's epic data dump, and she hadn't spared herself, let alone had time to scrub the records for Barton, if she would even have wanted to if he was a... but then why? 

Why is he HERE?

Over the course of 30 minutes, Bucky edges, imperceptibly slowly, into a new position that allows him to catch a full view of the other bed, reflected off the tiny reinforced glass view hatch in the door. The occupant is, yes, Hawkeye, Clint Barton. Clint Barton covered in various pieces of medical paraphernalia that he idly moves aside from time to time to scratch under. Yikes, what a sloppy cover. Bucky is professionally offended. And he's holding something, making... notes? No, it's a...

"Oh for fuck's sake, they gave YOU a word search?" blurts out Bucky.

Well really. This is some double-standard nonsense right here.

"Bucky!" squeaks Clint, falling off the bed. He hops around on one foot, then seems to realize it's the one that supposed to be in a cast that should, probably, not be so flexible, hops on the other one half-heartedly, stops, shrugs, and plunks himself down on the floor, crosslegged, his copy of GIANT EASY LARGE PRINT WORD FINDS VOLUME 64 forgotten, one hand trailing behind him to where it's still handcuffed to the bed frame. "You're awake!"

"Barely." Bucky sits up. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh, I'm injured? Very, very injured. And a flight risk. So..." Clint jangles the handcuff.

"I heard you talking to FRIDAY. I know you're faking it."

Clint looks offended. "I am not! You've met me, Barnes, why would I need to fake an injury?"

Bucky is thrown by this for a moment. "Okay, that's a good point."

"He's genuinely injured, Sergeant Barnes," pipes up FRIDAY. "But not as badly as it looks and it was on purpose to get in to see you."

"FRIDAY! I thought we were bros!" 

FRIDAY does not dignify this with a response.

"You... what?" asks Bucky.

"What?"

"WHAT," repeats Bucky firmly, waving his free hand around to encompass... all of... Clint's everything.

"It's a long story."

Bucky jangles his own handcuff meaningfully. "I apparently have time to listen to a long story."

"Oh. Right. Okay, um, so..." Clint trails off.

FRIDAY helpfully steps in. "He overheard the Captain bragging about getting you booked for your gunshot, tried to get in as a visitor, was refused as you are in the secure ward, then went to get the stupidest injury imaginable, no doubt a lifetime career goal, then got Natasha to sneak him in, which if you ask me he should have just done from the start instead of fooling around with a kiddie swing, and here he is, horny and inarticulate, not having planned what to do if he got this far."

"...!!!!" says Clint's face.

"Uh. Wow. Okay," manages Bucky.

Clint walks to the far side of the room and punches the wall a few times until the one visitor's chair, bolted down, shakes loose. He drags it over to Bucky's bed and sits down, facing Bucky earnestly. "I can explain," he says, and doesn't.

"Wait, weren't you in cuffs a minute ago?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, probably."

"Uh, little help here, then?" Bucky clangs his cuff against the bed rail. It's kind of amazing that none of the medical staff have arrived to check out all this elevated heart-rate and loud banging and property damage etc, but with FRIDAY involved, all bets are off.

Clint leaps up and starts fiddling with Bucky's cuff. "Hmm. You can't like, disconnect that, can you?"

"What, my hand?"

"Yeah! I mean... it's a robo-hand, right?"

"Yeah, a robo-hand that is designed not to be disassembled easily, say during combat." 

"Ohhh, that makes sense." 

"Or during eating with a spoon, or during any of the other hand-using activities that people do where their _hands don't fall off._ " 

"Uh."

"Can you disconnect YOUR hand? Huh?" Bucky is maybe a little punchy at this point. It's been a long week.

"Kinda!" Clint dislocates his wrist.

"Oh my god, put it back," says Bucky, horrified.

Clint puts it back.

"I thought I was joking. What just happened."

"Well I don't have my lockpicks with me. How do you think I got out of the cuffs?"

"I don't... I just..."

Clint laughs, then stops. "Wait! Shit, I do have my lockpicks." He tugs something out from between the layers of one of his tensor bandages and starts working on the cuff in earnest, which clicks open shortly thereafter. "Sorry, forgot about that."

Bucky sits all the way up now, stretches his arms up and cracks his back, then relaxes. "You got anything else good in there? Snacks?"

"Oh man, that would have been such a good idea." 

"Oh well."

Clint settles back on the chair. "Sooo. Uh. I guess you know I... uh." Clint laughs nervously. "I mean, cat's kind of out of the bag, now, thanks FRIDAY."

Bucky grimaces. "Clint, I have absolutely no fucking idea why you are here."

"Oh, well, like FRIDAY said, there was this swing, and..."

"Yeah, yeah, I mean. Why. WHY are you here."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh." Bucky waits. Clint continues to not explain. 

After a few minutes, Bucky cracks and throws him a bone. "Or why the amazing Hawkeye, a marksman and literal spy, has a book of easy word searches. Shouldn't you be doing, I don't know, super advanced ultra hidden steganographic magic eye puzzle word searches?"

"Is that a real thing?"

"Probably not?"

"I bet Natasha has a copy if it's real."

"She probably wrote it if it's real."

"Okay yeah."

There's another long pause. Finally: "Clin—" "Bucket—"

"No, you go fir—did you just call me Bucket?"

"Too soon?"

"Too soon after what?!" 

Clint is grinning hugely; Bucky realizes a beat too late that he's just trying to get out of explaining himself. "Never mind. Why are you here. All..." he dredges up FRIDAY's exact words. "Horny and inarticulate. Why did you want to visit me. I'm not..." He trails off. "Steve's the only one who..."

"Fuck Steve," blurts out Clint.

"What?"

Clint looks slightly horrified at what his mouth has done. "I mean! Steve's great. Just."

"Just what?"

Clint looks mulish; Bucky raises his eyebrows and gets out his best murder stare. His best murder stare is really, really scary, he has it on good authority.

"Just... I was really mad. When I heard him being all smug about getting you in here."

Bucky sighs. "Steve means well. It's hard for him to see me hurt."

"I don't give a shit! You shouldn't have to be handcuffed to a bed just because you got shot."

"Well, I wasn't coming in voluntarily, so they kind of had a point." Bucky was furious about this exact same thing a few hours ago; he's not sure why he's defending it now.

"For a reason, though, yeah?" Clint continues in a quieter tone. "You spent 70 years having medical procedures forced on you. You want to deal with a measly little gunshot in private, Steve should get over himself and let you."

Bucky's mouth hangs open. It's not that he doesn't agree, he just...

He just...

He just didn't think anyone else would stand up for him. Would understand. Would bother to even try to understand Bucky as anything but an adjunct feature of Steve. Even Natasha, who for damn sure knows him as much, much more than good ol' Bucky Barnes, Cap's sidekick, treats him like they're joined at the hip. Although that may be kinder than treating him as the Red Room bogeyman of her childhood. And... Steve is great. Steve's his best friend. After a hundred goddamn years, Steve's got friendship tenure. But Steve can also be... a lot.

Clint is still talking. "And I can't pull rank on Captain America. He is definitely the boss of me. But I figured I could... I don't know. I could come tell you I think it's bullshit too. And sit with you and think it was bullshit together."

Fuck, Bucky's getting tears in his eyes. 

"Clint, that's..."

"I'm sorry, I guess I fucked this all up. I shouldn't have... I shouldn't barge in and insult your best friend and—"

"Clint shut up and sit down. With me. This is the nicest thing anyone's done for me since... well Shuri tops this, but that's about it."

Clint blinks. Clint shuts up. Clint sits down. Clint slowly starts to smile. "I did good?"

Bucky scowls, swiping a hand over his eyes to dry them, then scoots over in bed and pats the mattress beside him. "Bring that word search over here," he says gruffly. "You look like you need some help with it."

And this is how, two days before Christmas, Bucky finds himself with a snoring Clint draped over his chest, a word search book lying forgotten on the floor. He jostles Clint a little until the snoring stops, then presses a soft kiss to his hair as he drifts off himself, this time without the help of neomorphine.

=====

Clint wakes up around midnight, stands up on the bed, and unscrews a ceiling vent with the blunt end of a lockpick. He chins himself up into the shaft, then reaches down a hand to help Bucky follow him. 

=====

"What do you mean, you lost him? How do you LOSE an unconscious patient from the locked ward?!" 

=====

It's two days later, and Bucky wakes up in Clint's bed, again, Lucky draped serenely over his feet, the smell of coffee drifting in from the kitchen. A shirtless Clint wearing a santa hat is standing in the doorway. "Sleep okay?"

"Yeah, yeah actually I did." Bucky smiles and makes grabby hand motions, and Clint, laughing, obediently comes back to bed to share his coffee breath. 

"I really don't want to go back home," murmurs Bucky some time later.

And this is how Bucky realizes, on Christmas morning, that he already is.

=====

It's four more days until Steve sees Bucky again, bumping into him carrying a stack of boxes out of his room. 

"Bucky?!"

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

Steve stops cold, the blood draining from his face.

"Sorry! Sorry. Couldn't resist."

"Oh my god, I thought—"

Bucky rolls his eyes. "Steve. I'm fine."

"Oh! How's the..." Steve reaches for Bucky's side, then stops.

"Bullet wound? Healed. It was mostly healed half an hour after Doc P dug out the last of the shrapnel, honestly." Bucky sets down his boxes and peels up his shirt to show smooth skin, no trace of the entry wound left. 

"Oh... good."

"Yup!" Bucky hefts his boxes back up and starts down the hall.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

"Oh, I ah... I left you a note."

"I just got back from a mission." 

"Ah. Well. I'm, ah, moving out."

"What? Where? Why?" Steve looks alarmed, then breaks eye contact, looking guilty. "Is it because I..."

Bucky sighs and sets down his boxes again. "I'm not mad." He pauses. "Okay I'm a little mad." 

Steve makes a little involuntary high-pitched squeak of dismay and Bucky draws him into a hug. "Annnnd there are the puppydog eyes. Hey, hey, settle down. I'm mad at my stupid overprotective brother, that's all, but he's still my brother, and nothing's gonna change that."

Steve nods against Bucky's shoulder and seems to draw himself together a bit. He steps back.

"I just need some space for myself, okay? You'll still see plenty of me, I'm not going far."

"I... okay, Buck. Whatever you need. But where are you moving to?"

"He's moving in with me!" Clint appears in the doorway and picks up the stack of boxes cheerfully.

"What? I... what?"

"I know, I know, we're a lesbian stereotype, right?" says Clint, kissing Bucky on the cheek and then wandering off with his boxes.

Steve, face still stuck several sentences back, does not have a response to this. 

"I'd better go help him with that," says Bucky.

Steve blinks. 

"Hey. Steve. Really." Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder. "I'm fine. We're fine. Go for a run tomorrow?"

Steve closes his mouth and nods.

"Good man." Bucky pats his shoulder and slips out after Clint.

=====

"Are we lesbians?" asks Bucky in the elevator. "I thought we were gay. Did that change since the last time I...?"

Clint snickers. "I would tell you, but I reallllly want to see what your next Google search is if I don't."

Bucky flicks Clint on the side of the head. "You're the worst."

"And the best?"

Bucky leans around the stack of boxes and kisses Clint firmly. "And the best."


End file.
